“Ramaphosa signed a deal with the devil”

Ramaphosa’s efforts to fight corruption is hampered by the background of his deputy, the analyst says.

North West University’s political and policy specialist Theo Venter has described the deputising of President Cyril Ramaphosa by David Mabuza as “demeaning” for South Africa as a nation.

“Ramaphosa had to make a deal with the devil, with no doubt Mabuza being one of the compromises he had to make,” Venter said, referring to the Mpumalanga strongman.

“Having him as a deputy president is demeaning for South Africa. People are talking and writing about him worldwide, how will the country sustain itself?” Venter said.

He said it would be hard for Mabuza to be the President as the ANC is currently “divided”.

“Look at the ANC right now, it is divided so much that they won’t be able to elect anyone as President,” he told the Citizen newspaper.

“It was a very positive thing for South Africans to have Ramaphosa as President and to have gotten rid of Jacob Zuma, then to have Mabuza as deputy president has made some South Africans start losing hope. The people are disappointed that Ramaphosa is not dealing with corruption,” says the analyst.

Mabuza is currently wading off attacks from detractors, who are accusing him of being a corrupt leader.

On 4 August 2018, the New York Times ran a damning report on its front page charging Mabuza was undermining Ramaphosa’s efforts to end corruption and maladministration because of his questionable past as leader of the ANC and government in Mpumalanga.

During the time he was education MEC, Mabuza was involved in a matric results scandal and investigation into it never materialised.

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He is also accused of being behind a spade of assassinations of opponents in the province over a period of 20 years but the ANC in the province believes this is a revised version of old attacks on the leader and have vowed to defend him.

“The people who are making allegations against him were told to lay charges against him and no one has submitted any evidence,” Mpumalanga ANC spokesman Sibusiso Themba said.

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“These are stories that are being written, we have seen them and heard them before, but they have never added the evidence,” said Themba.

Of the New York Times article, Mabuza’s spokesman Thami Ngwenya said it is “rejected with the contempt it deserves”.

“The article is viewed in the same way as previous attempts of political smearing against the name of the deputy president,” he said.

(edited by MLM)

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